Sanofi-backed Click Therapeutics gains industry veterans in executive boost

Digital therapeutics company Click has been on a small hiring spree, bringing new medical and regulatory execs into the fold.

Randall Kaye, M.D., and Austin Speier join the young company’s top ranks, the former as its chief medical officer and the latter as its chief strategy officer.

Kaye comes direct from for SSI Strategy, where he was CSO, while also serving as CMO for central nervous system biotech Axsome Therapeutics. He was previously the CMO at Avanir Pharmaceuticals.

Speier, meanwhile, comes from Precision for Medicine as its VP for emerging technologies, where he helped work on go-to-market strategies for complex or first-in-class products, especially those with a digital software-based component.

The company notes in a statement that both “bring extensive clinical development and regulatory strategy experience, specifically in translating scientific advances into successful products that improve health outcomes and enhance patient experience,” and comes as the startup looks to boost its exec team, with an eye to getting its products onto the market in the future.

Just two months ago, French big pharma Sanofi, through its venture arm, led a $17 million funding round for Click, which wants to boost work on an online platform of “prescription digital therapeutics.”

The company’s leading product is Clickotine, designed for smoking cessation, that works as a phone app designed to help people stop smoking using input from Magellan Health, a behavioral healthcare company.

This platform offers services such as live coaching, access to nicotine replacement therapy, personalized messages (via a learning program it says can individually tailor the platform) and more.

Clickotine bills itself as a complete platform, backed by doctors and data scientists, to help those wanting to quit via a “digital journey.” The company believes it can boost cessation numbers and also pass on healthcare savings by having fewer people suffer smoking-related diseases.

With that recent funding boost, Click will look to push on with similar programs aimed at: depression (CT-152), insomnia (CT-141), acute coronary syndrome (CT-111) and chronic pain (CT-130).

The company says these programs will be able to be “prescribed” by doctors and reflect the growing interest from pharma in the advent of new digital frontiers in medicine across medical devices, online platforms, “digital” or “smart” drugs, and other areas such as telemedicine and e-patients.

“This is an exciting time to welcome Randall and Austin to our executive team as we continue to rapidly advance our product development pipeline,” said David Benshoof Klein, co-founder and CEO of Click, of new staffers.

“Randall and his success as CMO of Avanir and bringing Nuedexta through development, FDA approval and launch, will provide crucial industry knowledge and leadership. Austin’s extensive strategic consulting and FDA regulatory experience, spanning over 250 life sciences companies and many first-in-class digital products, will be instrumental to Click as the company navigates novel and complex product opportunities with evolving FDA regulatory pathways.”